Over in the forum, commenter GuJiaXian posted a lengthy article about how he ran into a spot of trouble with Martian Dreams, and encountered what seemed, at first, like a plot-stopping bug:

There are four pillars, each representing a person you have to rescue. The lower two are just fine, but the upper two have a problem: while the pillars are still there (showing that I need to rescue the people trapped there), the people I need to rescue (Earp and Clemens) are already there. They’re standing right in front of their respective pillars, which means that I can’t step there (which is what triggers you going into the scenario to rescue that person). Talking to Clemens and Earp gives their “please rescue me” dialog, and talking to Tekapesh in the real world confirms that, so far as the game is concerned, Earp and Clemens have not been rescued.

So, I can’t rescue either of these people. I can’t push them out of the way (ove), and talking to them doesn’t help. There’s a program out there (MDHack 1.1) that should enable the cheat codes in the game (I’d try to either warp to the dream scenario areas on the map or simply turn on the no-clip mode and walk over Earp and Clemens–hopefully this would trigger the game flags they’re currently standing on). Unfortunately, MDHack says that my game files aren’t compatible (despite me having the original disks right in front of me) and just quits without activating the cheat mode.

Fortunately, he was able to resolve the issue…but only by attacking Earp and Clemens, which of course caused them to run away. It also made them refuse to speak to him at all, of course. Now, that shouldn’t be a problem, since it is only necessary to rescue both men in order to progress with the game. Even so, I can’t help but think that there might have been a better solution for this situation.

If you’ve encountered and surmounted this error, good Dragons and Dragonettes, drop some advice in the comments or the forum thread.